Tuesday, June 18, 2019

EVIL?: Facebook Announces Cryptocurrency Project Libra

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
This could very well be the dark step that moves the world toward government tracking of all transactions.


Facebook has just revealed its long-awaited cryptocurrency plans. It has announced “Project Libra,” a new type of digital money designed for the billions of people using its apps and social network.

Users will soon be able to shop with and send the currency—known as Libra—on Messenger and Instagram, as well as use it with a wide variety of other merchants like Uber, Spotify, and MasterCard.

The company also announced a new digital wallet called Calibra, which will be operated by Facebook as a separate subsidiary and provide users with a way to store and spend Libra. The digital wallet, which won’t be available to the public for months, will display the value of users’ Libra in their local currency and provide a design similar to popular digital wallet Venmo for transferring money.

Facebook provided an image of Calibra’s design—including a three-wave symbol that serves as the Libra’s equivalent of a dollar sign.


Initial partners with Facebook include the establishment crony elite including Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Coinbase, and venture capital firms like Andreesen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures.

And here is the "devil in the details" tracking clause which makes the venture dangerous and evil.

According to the Libra Association’s head of policy, Dante Disparte, customers in the U.S. will be subject to so-called “know your customer” requirements, meaning they will have to provide detailed personal information to use the service.


Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and most recently Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here.


4 comments:

  1. not going to be good for bitcoin.

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  2. Doesn't one have to provide identification to use any digital payment system now? How is this different from any other digital payment systems where transactions are recorded? Isn't cash still the only anonymous alternative and isn't this a threat to cash only if it is adopted as widely as AliPay and TenPay are in China?

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is on par with someone in Zimbabwe wanting to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Libra one letter away from Liberal

    ReplyDelete